How to think about balance
Welcome to the weekly warble here at Ideanthro Movement.
Balance is our topic this week.
Balance is an incredibly important skill. When you're young this isn't particularly apparent. Our balance is most likely quite good, and we often take it for granted. But as we age, our balance slowly deteriorates, and eventually we realise just how important it is.
If you want to improve your balance, here's a tip.
Think about balance not as one skill, but as a larger group of inter-related skills.
Yes, standing on one leg (or any other such balance activity) is great. But it will primarily make you better at standing on one leg. If we want to improve our balance in general, we're best to supplement that standing on one leg with a few other related, but not identical movements.
For example, if you were to spend a small amount of time each day practicing each of the following it would be a better mix than just standing on one leg.
5 minutes - Practice walking along a low narrow surface (e.g. a garden edge or the curb). Pick something safe for you.
5 minutes - Practice standing on one leg while supporting yourself with a hand. Now reach as far as you can in various different directions. You will find that as you lean and rotate in various directions, the difficulty increases. This is balance on one leg while out of perfect alignment. A very valuable skill.
2 minutes - Practice lightly bouncing from foot to foot, as if you were gently warming up for a sporting event, or doing a simple dance.
By mixing these three activities together in moderate amounts (you don't need to do exactly the amount that I specified) you get a good mix of 3 important balance skills:
The ability to balance in perfect, upright alignment
The ability to balance in a wide variety of positions beyond simply standing upright
The ability to move fluidly and dynamically
That's it for this week's warble. I hope you found it interesting.
If you'd like help improving your balance then let us know. It's one of our favourite things to help people with. You'll find plenty of balance practice in our Natural Movement Lite classes at 9:15 and 10:15 on weekday mornings. And we can also practice balance in personal training sessions as well!
Cheers
Jack